We develop care and understanding.

We develop a deep level of care and understanding for users. To do this, we employ three different methods: immersion, observation and engagement. In some situations we might use only one, in others all three.

Immersion

Whenever possible, we want to “walk in the shoes” of our users, and get experience of specific situations for ourselves. So we go out into the field, or into other businesses.

To experience the pain points, high points and emotions of end users, we design and execute a wide range of scenarios. We are looking for extremes: we want to experience the best and worst context in which a solution might be used.

Observation

Sometimes immersion isn’t possible because experiencing scenarios can require specialised job knowledge or qualifications. In these situations, we observe potential users and document their current processes and workflows using the “What? How? Why?” framework.

We document what someone is doing in a particular situation, noting the obvious as well as the surprising. We observe how someone is performing in a given situation, including the emotional state at each step. And we make informed judgements about why someone is doing what they’re doing, in terms of motivations and emotions.

This reveals assumptions and hypotheses. We test these hypotheses with our target group through interviews.

Engagement

Sometimes it isn’t possible to immerse ourselves in experiences or to observe others. And in other situations, we are aware that our observation and immersion techniques have only exposed a limited subset of experiences. In these situations, we talk to people who live and breathe the scenarios we’re working to understand.

When we interview users, we use techniques to establish insights quickly. We encourage concrete stories about situations. We aren’t interested in how things “usually” are: we want descriptions of specific events.

We want our interviewees to be honest, so we don’t ask leading questions. We ask about emotions: emotional responses give us insights to high and low points. And we look for inconsistencies: discrepancies between what people say and how they behave can lead to powerful insights.